Never-Fail Blake

by Arthur Stringer

  XIX

  No catastrophe that was mental in its origin could oppress for long aman so essentially physical as Blake. For two desolate hours, it istrue, he wandered about the streets of the city, struggling to medicinehis depression of the mind by sheer weariness of the body. Then thehabit of a lifetime of activity reasserted itself. He felt the need offocusing his resentment on something tangible and material. And as acomparative clarity of vision returned to him there also came backthose tendencies of the instinctive fighter, the innate protest againstinjustice, the revolt against final surrender, the forlorn claim for atleast a fighting chance. And with the thought of his official downfallcame the thought of Copeland and what Copeland had done to him.

  Out of that ferment of futile protest arose one sudden decision. Evenbefore he articulated the decision he found it unconsciously swayinghis movements and directing his steps. He would go and see Copeland!He would find that bloodless little shrimp and put him face to facewith a few plain truths. He would confront that anemicDeputy-Commissioner and at least let him know what one honest manthought of him.

  Even when Blake stood before Copeland's brownstone-fronted house, thehouse that seemed to wear a mask of staid discretion in every drawnblind and gloomy story, no hesitation came to him. His naturallyprimitive mind foresaw no difficulties in that possible encounter. Heknew it was late, that it was nearly midnight, but even that did notdeter him. The recklessness of utter desperation was on him. Hispurpose was something that transcended the mere trivialities ofevery-day intercourse. And he must see him. To confront Copelandbecame essential to his scheme of things.

  He went ponderously up the brown stone steps and rang the bell. Hewaited patiently until his ring was answered. It was some time beforethe door swung open. Inside that door Blake saw a solemn-eyed servantin a black spiked-tailed service-coat and gray trousers.

  "I want to see Mr. Copeland," was Blake's calmly assured announcement.

  "Mr. Copeland is not at home," answered the man in the service-coat.His tone was politely impersonal. His face, too, was impassive. Butone quick glance seemed to have appraised the man on the doorstep, tohave judged him, and in some way to have found him undesirable.

  "But this is important," said Blake.

  "I'm sorry, sir," answered, the impersonal-eyed servant. Blake made aneffort to keep himself in perfect control. He knew that his unkemptfigure had not won the good-will of that autocratic hireling.

  "I 'm from Police Headquarters," the man on the doorstep explained,with the easy mendacity that was a heritage of his older days.

  He produced the one official card that remained with him, the one wornand dog-eared and once water-soaked Deputy-Commissioner's card whichstill remained in his dog-eared wallet. "I 've got to see him onbusiness, Departmental business!"

  "Mr. and Mrs. Copeland are at the Metropolitan, sir," explained theservant. "At the Opera. And they are not back yet."

  "Then I 'll wait for him," announced Blake, placated by the humblernote in the voice of the man in the service-coat.

  "Very good, sir," announced the servant. And he led the way upstairs,switching on the electrics as he went.

  Blake found himself in what seemed to be a library. About this softlyhung room he peered with an acute yet heavy disdain, with anindeterminate envy which he could not control. It struck him as beingfeminine and over fine, that shadowy room with all its warm hangingsand polished wood. It stood for a phase of life with which he had nopatience. And he kept telling himself that it had not been come byhonestly, that on everything about him, from the silver desk ornamentsto the marble bust glimmering out of its shadowy background, he himselfhad some secret claim. He scowled up at a number of signed etchingsand a row of diminutive and heavily framed canvases, scowled up at themwith quick contempt. Then he peered uncomfortably about at the shelvesof books, mottled streaks of vellum and morocco stippled with gold,crowded pickets of soft-lettered color which seemed to stand betweenhim and a world which he had never cared to enter. It was a foolishworld, that world of book reading, a lackadaisical region of unreality,a place for women and children, but never meant for a man with a man'swork to do.

  His stolidly contemptuous eyes were still peering about the room whenthe door opened and closed again. There was something socharacteristically guarded and secretive in the movement that Blakeknew it was Copeland even before he let his gaze wheel around to thenewcomer. About the entire figure, in fact, he could detect thatfamiliar veiled wariness, that enigmatic and self-concealingcautiousness which had always had the power to touch him into a quickirritation.

  "Mr. Blake, I believe," said Copeland, very quietly. He was in fullevening dress. In one hand he held a silk hat and over one arm hung ablack top-coat. He held himself in perfect control, in too perfectcontrol, yet his thin face was almost ashen in color, almost theneutral-tinted gray of a battle-ship's side-plates. And when he spokeit was with the impersonal polite unction with which he might haveaddressed an utter stranger.

  "You wished to see me!" he said, as his gaze fastened itself on Blake'sfigure. The fact that he remained standing imparted a tentativeness tothe situation. Yet his eyes remained on Blake, studying him with thecold and mildly abstracted curiosity with which he might view a mummyin its case.

  "I do!" said Blake, without rising from his chair.

  "About what?" asked Copeland. There was an acidulated crispness in hisvoice which hinted that time might be a matter of importance to him.

  "You know what it's about, all right," was Blake's heavy retort.

  "On the contrary," said Copeland, putting down his hat and coat, "I 'mquite in the dark as to how I can be of service to you."

  Both his tone and his words angered Blake, angered him unreasonably.But he kept warning himself to wait, to hold himself in until theproper moment arrived.

  "I expect no service from you," was Blake's curtly guttural response.He croaked out his mirthless ghost of a laugh. "You 've taught mebetter than that!"

  Copeland, for all his iciness, seemed to resent the thrust.

  "We have always something to learn," retorted, meeting Blake's stolidstare enmity.

  "I guess I've learned enough!" said Blake.

  "Then I hope it has brought you what you are looking for!" Copeland,as he spoke, stepped over to a chair, but he still remained on his feet.

  "No, it has n't brought me what I 'm after," said the other man. "Notyet! But it's going to, in the end, Mr. Copeland, or I 'm going toknow the reason why!"

  He kept warning himself to be calm, yet he found his voice shaking alittle as he spoke. The time was not yet ripe for his outbreak. Theclimactic moment was still some distance away. But he could feel itemerging from the mist just as a pilot sights the bell-buoy that markshis changing channel.

  "Then might I ask what you are after?" inquired Copeland. He foldedhis arms, as though to fortify himself behind a pretense ofindifferency.

  "You know what I 've been after, just as I know what you 've beenafter," cried Blake. "You set out to get my berth, and you got it.And I set out to get Binhart, to get the man your whole push could n'tround up--and I 'm going to get him!"

  "Blake," said Copeland, very quietly, "you are wrong in both instances."

  "Am I!"

  "You are," was Copeland's answer, and he spoke with a studious patiencewhich his rival resented even more than his open enmity. "In the firstplace, this Binhart case is a closed issue."

  "Not with me!" cried Blake, feeling himself surrendering to the tidethat had been tugging at him so long. "They may be able to buy off youcuff-shooters down at Headquarters. They may grease your palm downthere, until you see it pays to keep your hands off. They may pull arope or two and make you back down. But nothing this side o' the gateso' hell is going to make _me_ back down. I began this man-hunt, and _I'm going to end it_!"

  He took on a dignity in his own eyes. He felt that in the face ofevery obstacle he was still the instrument of an inelu
ctable andincorruptible Justice. Uncouth and buffeted as his withered figure mayhave been, it still represented the relentlessness of the Law.

  "That man-hunt is out of our hands," he heard Copeland saying.

  "But it's not out of _my_ hands!" reiterated the detective.

  "Yes, it's out of your hands, too," answered Copeland. He spoke with acalm authority, with a finality, that nettled the other man.

  "What are you driving at?" he cried out.

  "This Binhart hunt is ended," repeated Copeland, and in the eyeslooking down at him Blake saw that same vague pity which had rested inthe gaze of Elsie Verriner.

  "By God, it's not ended!" Blake thundered back at him.

  "It is ended," quietly contended the other. "And precisely as you haveput it--Ended by God!"

  "It's what?" cried Blake.

  "You don't seem to be aware of the fact, Blake, that Binhart isdead--dead and buried!"

  Blake stared up at him.

  "Is what?" his lips automatically inquired.

  "Binhart died seven weeks ago. He died in the town of Toluca, out inArizona. He's buried there."

  "That's a lie!" cried Blake, sagging forward in his chair.

  "We had the Phoenix authorities verify the report in every detail.There is no shadow of doubt about it."

  Still Blake stared up at the other man.

  "I don't believe it," he wheezed.

  Copeland did not answer him. He stepped to the end of the desk andwith his scholarly white finger touched a mother-of-pearl bell button.Utter silence reigned in the room until the servant answered hissummons.

  "Bridley, go to my secretary and bring me the portfolio in the seconddrawer."

  Blake heard and yet did not hear the message. A fog-like sense ofunreality seemed to drape everything about him. The earth itselfseemed to crumble away and leave him poised alone in the very emptinessof space. Binhart was dead!

  He could hear Copeland's voice far away. He could see the returningfigure of the servant, but it seemed as gray and ghostlike as theentire room about him. In his shaking fingers he took the officialpapers which Copeland handed over to him. He could read the words, hecould see the signatures, but they seemed unable to impart anyclear-cut message to his brain. His dazed eyes wandered over thenewspaper clippings which Copeland thrust into his unsteady fingers.There, too, was the same calamitous proclamation, as final as though hehad been reading it on a tombstone. Binhart was dead! Here were theproofs of it; here was an authentic copy of the death certificate, thereports of the police verification; here in his hands were the finaland indisputable proofs.

  But he could not quite comprehend it. He tried to tell himself it wasonly that his old-time enemy was playing some new trick on him, a trickwhich he could not quite fathom. Then the totality of it all swepthome to him, swept through his entire startled being as a tidal-wavesweeps over a coast-shoal.

  Blake, in his day, had known desolation, but it had seldom beendesolation of spirit. It had never been desolation like this. Hetried to plumb it, to its deepest meaning, but consciousness seemed tohave no line long enough. He only knew that his world had ended. Hesaw himself as the thing that life had at last left him--a solitary andunsatisfied man, a man without an aim, without a calling, withoutcompanionship.

  "So this ends the music!" he muttered, as he rose weakly to his feet.And yet it was more than the end of the music, he had to confess tohimself. It was the collapse of the instruments, the snapping of thelast string. It was the ultimate end, the end that proclaimed itselfas final as the stabbing thought of his own death itself.

  He heard Copeland asking if he would care for a glass of sherry.Whether he answered that query or not he never knew. He only knew thatBinhart was dead, and that he himself was groping his way out into thenight, a broken and desolate man.